Remembering the Wii U: Nintendo's Dreamcast

With the Switch now officially launched and several months into the next generation of Nintendo games, it might be a good time to look back on its troubled older sibling. Nintendo certainly has been quick to sweep the Wii U under the rug following the Switch's release, and who could blame them given how abysmally it under-performed?

However as the Dreamcast has demonstrated, just because a console wasn't popular doesn't mean that it wasn't good. In fact, over time the Wii U brought out some of the best in Nintendo, perhaps serving as an important learning experience that helped them in some ways rediscover their roots.

Stopped reading right there, most of the Dreamcast games were basically right up there with PS2 visually, and it came out much earlier to boot. Had the PS2 hype not been so high i think the DC would've gotten more games and lasted longer.

The Wii U was quite far behind in visuals compared with competing consoles at that time.

Visuals, visuals, visuals. All you've talked about here is visuals, you do know that, don't you? Besides, while the WiiU wasn't as powerful as 'rival' consoles of the time, I don't remember playing (for example) MK8, SM3DW, Bayonetta 2, Tropical Freeze, Smash, etc, etc and being anything other than blown away by the visuals AND performance.

DC games almost always ran in 480p which looked better than the PS2's grainier look, but there is very little on the DC that compares on a technical level to games like GTA III, MGS 2, SotC, Jak, DMC...

Overrall i think examining the power gap is missing the real reason you cant compare them - the DC had a heck of a lot more games than the Wii U, and i think in 5 years DC games will keep coming while the Wii U will be collecting dust.

I had a lot of fun with the Wii U though, and i do think its a bit underrated.